Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Disturbing

There have been two very disturbing events in our neighborhood in the past few days. We live in a suburb of Houston in a subdivision of large lots (2-10 acres) with several lakes, a golf course and horse trails. The houses are big and the neighbors friendly. It's the quintessential Texas neighborhood.
We have a lot of deer that live in our subdivision and everyone feeds them. They are practically tame and this time of year they are fat and happy. There are some huge bucks that are absolutely gorgeous animals. Huge antlers (horns? racks??) that spread out like giant trophies. Which brings me to disturbing event #1. Saturday night about 10:30 pm, the sound of rapid gunshots rang out by our next door neighbors house. It sounded like automatic pistol fire. A quick 8-10 shots. Then quickly several more volleys of 8-10 shots. Then silence.
The next day our neighbor went out to get their newspaper and found blood splattered across her driveway. She followed the trail and it led up the street and into our yard. I went out to help her but we lost the trail in the grass. The blood drops were fairly large and close together, meaning something was losing a lot of blood. We didn't find a blood pool or a body, animal or human. We can only assume someone was trying to kill a deer and either it ran far enough away and died in the woods or they took it. This absolutely infuriates me! It also scares the living daylights out of me. Where did all those bullets go? What would have happened if they went through my front windows into my sleeping sons' bedrooms? What if they had hit the horses? I am so angry and yet there is nothing the police can do except do more patrolling in the neighborhood.
The 2nd disturbing event happened Monday night. I was coming home late from work, it was dark, and the that goes in front of our neighborhood is unlit, 5 lanes wide and 55 mph. Just as I was turning into the entrance a large truck pulled out. He didn't see the small car on my left and pulled directly in front of her. I watched in horror as they smashed together, ripping the back tire off the truck and spinning both vehicles all the way around. The small car had awesome airbags all the way around or it would have probably been a fatal wreck. The driver was injured but okay. She was covered in radiator fluid and we had to wedge her out from behind the wheel because it had been shoved backwards. (Yes we moved her, since gas was also leaking out all over and the risk of fire/explosion was great) The pickup was full of teenagers who were shook up but not hurt (Thank God!) They had all been wearing their seatbelts. It reminded me of the night of Kaytee's wreck when she was 14. The sirens, the lights, the emergency workers. It still gets to me when I think about how close we came to losing her that night. I went on home, hugged my husband and poured a glass of wine.